


yearning no more

by glacecherie



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, Selkies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-23 01:34:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13776879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacecherie/pseuds/glacecherie
Summary: Once a week, like clockwork, Nico waits for Nolan to come ashore. Once a week his chest flutters and feels too full, too light, too much warmth for one person alone.He's glad Nolan feels the same.[aka bittersweet folklore where these boys are so so soft and nolan is something of a tortured soul]





	1. Chapter 1

Nico thinks - rather stupidly - that now he knows about Nolan it seems so obvious. How he has a strange headstrong-but-slightly-morose expression, how his eyes are too sharp, how he's not - not _cold_ exactly. More an instinctive mistrust of the landfolk that Nico had written off as being disinterested at first.

It adds up now. He just didn't have all the pieces before.

Regardless, it never stops being weird waiting for him to come in from the sea at dawn. Once a week, an off day, trudging down to the coast with a set of clothes and a coffee. His hands are always _freezing_ , and he leeches the heat from Nico all the way back home, all the way into bed.

He's understandably tired, but he'll never quite let himself fall asleep until he's gotten his fill of affection, fingers pushed under Nico's sweater and pressed against his stomach, his chest.

"You're always still here." He says quietly, eyelids drooping as he sags further into Nico's chest.

"Where else would I be?" Nico murmurs, like speaking any louder would shatter the quiet. His heart beats faster. What he wants to say is _how could I possibly go anywhere else in the world when I'd never find anything that made me as happy as you_. He doesn't, not for the moment. Maybe later.

"I mean that I - trust you to still be here. I won't come ashore and find you gone."

He picks Nico's hand up in his and kisses his palm. This seems - big. It makes something gentle and important unfold in his chest and makes a home there.

He can't quite stop himself from digging just a little, gently.

"Is that what happened the last time?" He asks, and Nolan draws a sharp breath, pushing himself up on his elbows and gazing at him.

"I'll tell you, someday." He says eventually, eyes closing as Nico cups his face in his hand, thumbing at his sharp cheekbone. Nolan leans into it.

It's such a tender moment that Nico feels a flash of anger almost white hot.

Boys like Nolan aren't meant to be abandoned without explanation, left to pine without closure.

Then again, boys like himself aren't supposed to lean over the pier and cry, secret and shameful after an   
argument with friends. They aren't supposed to let their tears drip into the ocean and accidentally attract a creature he'd only read about in childhood folklore books. They definitely aren't supposed to fall in love with it.

God, just the idea that Nolan was put through that makes him almost nauseous and -

"Hey." Nolan says softly, rearranging himself until Nico has his nose tucked into Nico's neck. "Nap with me?"

Nico nods and holds him tighter to his chest, protective. He glances over at where Nolan's pelt is drying reflexively, making sure that's safe too.

Maybe things aren't perfect. He pines,  and Nolan - someone really fucked him over jesus christ - and the fireplace in his room really isn't keeping them warm enough for fucks sake - but.

Maybe things don't have to be.

 _This_ , them, Nolan's breathing deepening, the apartment creaking as it heats up, his hand against Nolan's nape. They're just where they're meant to be, together, with endless possibilities swirling before them.

It feels good, Nico thinks. He holds his boy closer and lets himself drift back to sleep.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small coda to the first chapter, maybe 6 months later, because these boys are irresistible. Sorry not sorry. Enjoy!

Nico sees it in Nolan sometimes, his past curling around him like a wraith and trying to drag him into the dark. Those are the nights when he stays up and clings to him, and Nico strokes his hair as gently as he knows. 

When he finally sleeps at dawn, he tucks him in, pelt draped around him, and works in the bedroom so there's someone there when he wakes. 

-

"Found you something." Nolan says by way of greeting one day when he comes back from the sea. He'd spent the day out there, because the call of the waves had gotten to hard to resist, siren-like. 

Nico turns from where he'd been lounged by the fire and pulls him in, kissing the corner of his mouth. His hair is still wet and his skin tastes of salt.

He opens his palm and reveals a small gold pendant of a saint, still covered in sand.

"St Nicholas." Nolan says, looking at him expectantly. "Patron saint of those lost at sea."

Nico feels struck dumb. They get each other small gifts every so often but this is...something else. It feels different.

"Thank you." He says roughly, placing it safely on the mantle and stroking his hand up Nolan's back, into the hair at his nape. He brushes their lips together again and Nolan grabs at the front of his shirt, turning the kiss deeper, dirtier. 

Nico bites along his jaw and undoes his top button so he can lap at his throat. He wonders if this desperation is how Nolan feels when he rushes out of the with his pelt stuff hastily in his rucksack, harried.

"Take me to bed." Nolan says, pupils blown, and Nico is entranced.

-

Nico fucks him on his back, legs around his waist, as the storm rages outside. 

It's slow and intense, and Nolan makes soft, satisfied little noises when Nico gathers him close. Nolan likes it like that. His thighs shake, and when he comes with his nails dug into Nico's shoulder blade, he whimpers.

"Yours, I'm yours, please don't let me go-"

Nico cuts him off by grabbing his hand and interlocking their fingers. He presses deep to come, looking at how Nolan's spread legs, the vulnerability he's brave enough to show.

"Never. Never, I promise, fuck. I promise."

-

The next day, Nolan wakes up early and ruins Nico's plan to take him his breakfast in bed before he has work.

He's wearing his boxers and the shirt Nico had flung off the night before, all bed hair and warmth as he presses against Nico's back. It's such a clichéd look, but god, it's working for him. His chest feels too full.

"Morning." Nolan murmurs, yawning and eyeballing the breakfast tray Nico'd put together. "Was this for me?"

"Yes. It's still for you, but I'm afraid the element of surprise has been lost."

"However will I cope." Nolan deadpans as he hops up on the counter, then freezes.

The coffee pot drips as it fills and the fire crackles, and Nolan is staring right at him, too intense.

"You're wearing it." He says roughly, reaching out to touch the pendant Nico had put on his chain. 

"Of course. Why wouldn't I? "

"It's just - it's a ritual, it's important for - for, I -" 

He stops and takes a panicky, shuddering breath, and Nico cuts him off.

"You don't have to say, right? You can tell me later, when you're ready. I don't mind."

Nolan nods, shaky, and Nico abandons buttering the toast in favour of pressing their foreheads together.

"I'm not leaving. I'd never do that to you, okay? You're - you're safe here. I promise."

"I love you." Nolan says, for the first time, and the quietness - the tiny intimate moment where the seconds stretch into something else - will be another one of those memories that sock him right in the chest even years, decades later.

"I love you." Nico says back, and it's the easiest thing he's ever done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't shame me for including Nolan getting r*wed in an emotional h/c fic. Please and thanks.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things are too good to be true, Nico thinks. Remaining content and oblivious to Nolan's past is one of those things.

One day, when it's dawn and the rain is beating down, the light catches Nolan just right and Nico sees it. A faint, faint scar on his stomach, white with age and not visible unless you'd be looking for it.

He props himself up on his elbow and tamps down the urge to trace it with his fingers. Nolan hadn't ever told him about any surgeries, but then again he doubts that selkies could even have surgery. They'd be caught, and if nothing else, Nolan is scrupulous about not being caught, of never being trapped.

All that added together makes him think that there might be a more sinister explanation.

He frowns against the instinctive anger he gets, because it's useless anyway, but he can't quite get rid of the niggling curiosity.

He tries his best to go back to sleep, but his eyes keep sliding back to it.

Even when he knows he won't like what he finds, it remains.

Creeping out of bed, he pulls the sheet up over Nolan again. If he's got someone to leech heat from, he's perfectly happy to sleep with any number of limbs stuck out of the bedclothes, but left alone he cocoons himself.

Nico kisses his shoulder and steels himself.

-

The pelt, laid out, is roughly the size of the kitchen table, and surprisingly heavy.

("It's because of all the mysterious sea magic" Nolan had said once as he towelled off his hair in the kitchen, naked as the day he was born. Nico thought it was more the fact it was covered in sand and seaweed but Nolan had been in a good mood and the skin at the base of his throat had tasted of salt, so he hadn't corrected him.)

Nico scrutinises it and sips at his coffee. It's in pretty good shape considering it's been through so much.

Also, in the current age of interior design it can be styled as a shabby chic (how his mum had described it when she visited) throw, which means Nolan no longer has a heart attack when there's a knock at the door.

(Nolan had smacked him around the back of the head for calling it shabby, though.)

He smiles and brushes his hand against it, about to fold it back up when he sees something that wipes the grin right off his face.

There's a completely furless slash, maybe a quarter inch wide and the length of his hand, palm to index finger.

He only hadn't noticed it because of how disguised it was unless the fur was disturbed.

Touching it makes a shiver run down his spine, and not in a good way. It's not new; completely smooth rather, and when he looks closer, he can see the tiny little indents where crude stitches maybe rested. He wishes he could rewind an hour or so and look a little less _besottedly_ at Nolan maybe, a little less closer.

Then again, just thinking that sounds like a lost cause. Nolan is flighty and pensive and seems to look upon romantic relationships with a sense of dread. Just as fucking well Nico has gone off the deep end feelings-wise, then.

Scowling, he folds the skin with perhaps a little more roughness than it deserves, hands quivering, and puts it back.

(There's a terrible joke in there somewhere - _deep end, the sea, ha ha_. It's the kind of one he'd tell Nolan and Nolan would groan in a pained sort of way, but that's beside the point.)

-

He doesn't say anything because he doesn't know how to bring it up. He knows in his gut that it isn't an accidental injury, a horrible niggling sense of _bad bad bad_ pushing at his chest. But he doesn't say anything.

Instead he just gets more desperate and clingy, which is bad because he's fairly sure that kind of behaviour will freak Nolan out no end and send him running only -

It _doesn't_.

When he and Nolan are sprawled out in bed, half watching TV and half making out lazily and Nico turns a tame kiss into something biting and filthy, Nolan just fucking melts.

He goes boneless and tilts his jaw into Nico's hand. He's baring the line of his throat, and something in Nico goes _mine_ , then amends it to _please be mine_ and -

He's only human, so he drags his mouth down his neck sucks at where Nolan's pulse is hammering, wanting to leave a mark and and press his teeth to the ridges of Nolan's collarbones.

He laps at the impressive hickey he's left and Nolan makes a soft sound.

"Feels good." He sighs, spreading his legs a fraction more and grinding his dick up into Nico's stomach.

"Yeah?" he says dumbly, and traces his thumb around the edge of Nolan's lips. They're deep pink, bruised looking, and Nico gets a _searing_ memory of how the last time they looked like that he was jerking off into Nolan's softly gaping mouth. Even then though, his eyes had been piercing.

Which they aren't currently. If anything, for the moment they look hazy and calm. Something tender settles behind Nico's ribs.

"Shit, I want you. I fucking - _love you_."

That wasn't what he'd planned on saying at all, but apparently it was the _right_ thing, because Nolan yanks him close again and kisses him, fucks his tongue into Nico's mouth, whines.

 _God_ , he looks hot.

"Can I fuck you?" He asks, pressing more kisses to Nolan's cheekbone and brow and corner of his mouth.

Nolan flushes, quite something if it's obvious even on his cheeks, nodding.

"Please." He reiterates, and Nico shudders, a little awestruck.

"Kay, just let me-"

He reaches into the bedside drawer for the lube, and even then Nolan doesn't let go, fingers clasped around his wrist.

-

He means to bring it up, he really does, but he gets sidetracked.

Namely because when he's being fingerfucked, Nolan looks like he's having some kind of rapturous experience.

Nico kisses at his stomach, purposely just shy of his cock, and Nolan whines, a low, desperate thing. He keeps his hips still, like he's challenging himself so that he maintains some kind of control and he is, but only just.

Nico wants him to let go completely, some part of him wanting wretchedly to take him apart.

So he plays dirty.

He spreads his two fingers without warning, tracing his thumb around where he's clenching down and slick, and laps at the precome beading at the tip of his cock.

Nolan straight up _yelps_.

"You're so pretty like this." He murmurs.

Nolan's thighs shake from trying to stay still.

Nico drizzles more lube onto his fingers and pushes in a third, slow enough that he knows it's toturous. He means it to be.

Nolan whimpers.

"God, you look so good. Can you feel it, how slick you are inside?"

Then he curls his fingers for emphasis and rubs, right as he strokes at his nipples and that is _it_.

Nolan's hand shoots down to grab onto Nico's forearm and hold it still as he rolls his hips. His stomach is fucking wet with how much he's been leaking at this point, and he's looks so wanton that Nico is suddenly painfully, painfully aware of how hard he is, how he wants to fold Nolan nearly in two so he can fuck him whilst barely giving him room to breathe between kisses.

"Please, Nico please, _please_ , fuck me, I need it, I really -"

 _Jesus christ,_ he's nearly sobbing.

Nico leans back up and Nolan grabs him, biting his mouth and trying to screw himself down on Nico's fingers. He looks - he just looks so absorbed in this, in them, no worry lines on his face that Nico just.

Can't bring himself to bring up the scar, even though it's cut across him in sharp relief with how flushed he is.

" _Shhh_ ," he says instead, easing his fingers out and lining himself up. "It's okay, baby. It's okay, let me give you what you need."

Then he's sinking home, and Nolan sobs for real, and the world narrows to just _them_.

-

Later, much later, he pulls Nico against his back and holds on tight enough that he wouldn't be surprised if there were bruises on him now. Nico can't stop himself from pressing kisses to his nape and clinging right back. He's come to need Nolan so much it terrifies him, and how intense their fucking had been earlier terrifies him even more.

 _Later_ , he decides. He'll ask later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly didn't mean for this to be explicit but here we are.


	4. Chapter 4

The thing is, there's never a good time to bring it up. The wet and dreary summer starts to turn into an equally dreary autumn, and he's so invested in making Nolan happy that the moment doesn't come.

There's no point at which he can say "so, about your dark past that still plagues you to this day-", and what's more, he doesn't want to.

Nolan doesn't do that to him, after all.

Then again, the darkest thing in his past is a listless few years after college where he couldn't decide where to put down roots and worked an even shittier job than his current shit café job.

He thinks maybe Nolan doesn't ask because it'd invite the question being asked back to him, but still, it sits like a lump in his throat. It's toturous in its own right.

-

"How did you end up here?" Nolan says one day. He's perched across the kitchen table from Nico, stealing bits of vegetables as he chops them for dinner.

Nico slaps his hands away on principle and Nolan ignores him. It's cute. That alone is kind of terrifying, that level of domesticity. It feels like the calm before a storm.

He shrugs.

"Don't know, really. Finished college. Picked a place on the map. I've always liked the coast but I didn't want to go anywhere warm."

"And you chose here." Nolan deadpans.

"What's wrong with here?"

"Nothing, if you like slightly depressing beachfronts and high rent, I suppose."

Nico opens his mouth to defend himself, then he looks around the place. A three room apartment that takes up most of his wages and he's fairly certain is haunted by the mean elderly woman that lived here before him.

"Point." He grumbles, and Nolan grins innocently at him, enough that his eyes crinkle. Nico's heart squeezes.

He puts the casserole dish haphazardly in the oven and rounds the table to kiss him, fingers pressed careful to the back of his neck, swallowing up the gentle, pleased noise Nolan makes.

 _I'll have this,_ he thinks. _Even if everything goes to shit. I'll have this._

-

Nolan hasn't been to sea in 3 weeks, and it's something of a record.

It's not so much that Nico keeps track of him and more that his skin hasn't moved from the sofa in that time, hasn't needed to dry out by the fire, hasn't sprinkled sand and seaweed across the floorboards.

On the plus side, he hasn't needed to vaccum as often, but something's bothering him about it.

It's especially weird because the ocean has been calm as of late, and the sunsets truly beautiful.

"Are you okay?" He asks one night, because he's woken up to find the bed empty and Nolan curled up the window seat, shivering. The window is open and he's got his head tilted like he's listening to the crash of the waves.

Nolan whips his head around, like he'd been a thousand miles away.

He doesn't answer, but he does let himself be pulled back to bed, and Nico lets himself be arranged so that Nolan can put his head on his chest.

Nico strokes his hair and doesn't let himself fall asleep until his breathing evens out.

-

"Come with me." Nolan says, late one afternoon in October. It's foggy out, like the sun never came up properly, and it's supposed to rain later. He knows because he checked the weather and planned to spend the day off from his shitty job outright avoiding the shitty weather.

He's nonplussed for a good minute, because he's sleepy enough that he could go for a nap then - oh. _Oh_ , he means to the ocean.

Nolan looks calm enough, but Nico can almost feel how he's a bag of nerves. One of his hands is curled around his coffee mug, white knuckled.

"Sure." He murmurs, heaving himself out of bed and wriggling out of his pyjamas, which he never actually changed out of today. So sue him.

Nolan's biting at his fingers and looking far away, so Nico pulls his hand away to kiss it. Small little moments of tenderness like that seem to sustain them better than any food or shelter ever could.

He grabs his coat when he's found slightly more suitable clothes and Nolan grabs his hand, looking at him like he's double checking Nico is okay with it.

As if the answer to that would ever be no.

Nico's heart aches with the thought of it.

-

The coast is as he expected; dismal. The storm washed a whole host of stuff ashore, and Nico has to watch his step for jellyfish, driftwood, and the occasional pieces of sea glass.

Nolan, as usual, picks a small hollow in the cliffside to change. Nico keeps his back turned until he hears the distinct sound of something splashing into the water, and snorts. Trust Nolan to have a hangup about how awkward heaving himself into the ocean looks.

Nolan himself bobs to the surface, huge eyes reflecting the grey sky. He's very whiskery, which is more than can be said for the state of his human face when he doesn't shave for a few days.

Nico tells him as such, and gets splashed for his trouble.

"Rude." He says, and Nolan does a kind of twitch that in a human would probably be a shrug.

He turns and dives beneath the surface, swimming far enough out that he can fully submerge himself, and Nico watches him, fascinated. He's graceful in the water, but there's something else too, something in his lizard brain that just knows he isn't of this world, at least not permenantly.

Nico clambers out onto the rocks and dips his feet into the water, sweatpants rolled up. It's so freezing it almost burns, and it's all he can manage when the cold here is the damp kind that feels like it soaks right through to your bones.

Nolan looks so...relieved, almost. Gliding in vast loops, too graceful to be fully animal. He wonders if he's showing off for him and flusters, even though nobody is present to witness it.

One time, they'd rented a tiny rowboat and gone just far enough out to be nothing more than a speck to people walking along the promenade. Nolan had been beneath the surface for an age, and Nico had taken a book to let Nolan know that there was no rush. By the time they got back to shore he hadn't been able to feel his fingers, and when he saw his reflection back at home he'd cracked a joke that now his cheeks were almost as flushed as Nolan's own.

(That had gotten him a piece of seaweed down the back of his shirt, but it had been worth it.)

-

By the time it starts to go dark, Nico has already gotten a small fire started at the mouth of the cave. The tide doesn't come in this far, but it'll still be cold for Nolan when he sneaks back to land.

He puts his pile of clothes over the pieces of driftwood to warm and gets out the blanket and thermos. Lapsang suchong today (pilfered from work), with whisky and honey. Perfect for when your lover deserts you for the waves, or

\- or when he sneaks up behind you and shakes his wet hair all over you like a dog.

Nico isn't ashamed to say he yelps, and Nolan is still laughing at him as he sits down, grateful for the cover of darkness to pull his underwear on. He hands Nico his pelt, in its usual state of disarray. He'll be sweeping up sand at home for days.

"Here." He says, passing Nolan his clothes one at a time so they stay warm.

Half of him still feels the ridiculous urge to avert his eyes, because seeing him like this, vulnerable and happily exhausted, always feels a little too intimate, after all this time.

Nolan drops down next to him eventually, slumping until his head is in Nico's lap, staring into the flames.

"Great job on the fire." He smirks, and Nico pinches his ribs. He's aware he's a crappy attempt. The wood keeps on falling over and needs prodding at.

"Ungrateful." He tsks, and Nolan looks wholly unrepentant. Nico pushes his hair out of his face and feels his breath stutter when Nolan turns and presses a kiss to his palm.

"Have fun?"

"Mm, it was great. Cold, gloomy, completely deserted."

"That's fun for you?"

"Fits my incredibly tortured soul, don't you think?" Nolan says, and he's smiling, but there's something behind it that's maybe wistful and sad.

"You know you can go out here whenever, right? You don't have to like, wait for permission."

"Old habits die hard, I guess."

Nolan freezes at the sharp breath Nico draws, like he hadn't meant to say that.

"Wanna elaborate? No pressure, seriously. Don't have to if you don't want."

Nolan huffs, opening and closing his mouth like he can't decide.

"You're so - " He starts.

"Tall, handsome, the best you've ever had?"

"Oh fuck off. I just - I don't want you to feel bad, I guess."

Nico hums, stroking behind Nolan's ear and feeling him untense minutely.

Nolan takes a deep breath.

"I first came ashore when I was 18. Not here. I don't even remember where. I thought it was so cool, and everything was so new and shiny. I thought that the sea was shit after that."

Nico snorts.

"My parents warned me constantly, that nothing good would come of it. That landfolk were evil and that I'd end up accidentally making some poor man's wife fall in love with me and she'd die of sorrow or try and take my skin to force me to stay."

"I'm sorry."

Nolan shrugs.

"Hardly your fault. Anyway, even with all the assurances in the world that I wouldn't bewitch an unsuspecting woman, they weren't convinced, but I didn't listen. I was too headstrong."

"Did you, then? Accidentally bewitch some poor man's wife?"

Nolan laughs, and some of the tension falls away.

"Hardly likely, was it? I think you have to do more than accidentally make eye contact or small talk. I had women who I was friends with, but no more than that, obviously. I was careful. I never stayed in one place too long. I took every precaution and -"

He presses his lips together into a thin line and exhales shakily. Nico pulls him closer against his side. He doesn't want to push him, but at the same time he can't just let it go.

"And? Nolan, what happened?"

He's pushing anyway, he hears himself, and he knows it's a mistake the second the words are out of his mouth.

Nolan looks at him sharply, filled with a quiet sort of rage for a second, then he sighs, shoulders sagging.

"I - _can't_. I'm sorry. I don't want to keep secrets but -"

 _That's all you have to keep you safe,_ Nico thinks. He squeezes him tighter and turns until he can push their faces close.

"You never have to be sorry, not for that. It's enough that you're here."

Nolan blinks rapidly, then squeezes his eyes shut. He gives a single nod.

"Okay. Promise?"

"Promise."

Nico ducks to kiss his cheek, the bridge of his nose, any bit he can reach, until Nolan huffs fondly. Only then does he kiss him properly, when he can feel him smiling against his lips.

"I wish we could stay like this." He murmurs, staring into Nico's shit show of a fire. He tosses another piece of wood onto it, casting little orange sparks spiralling towards the darkening sky.

Nico watches it reflected in Nolan's eyes. He's so beautiful in profile, made more so by the flames. He could watch him forever.

In that moment he almost gets it, almost understands why someone would try and make Nolan stay. That guarantee that someone would be by your side as long as you lived made flesh in the form of his pelt.

He feels vaguely nauseous and overcome by the need to take Nolan home and just - _treasure_ him.

"Want to head back?" He says, stroking Nolan's hair.

"Just a little longer. Please."

Nico squeezes his hand tight.

"Of course.'

-

  
Later, when they've picked their way back along the beach and stumbled home, Nolan drops everything the second the door shuts behind them and kisses Nico, desperate. He's frantic enough that when he fists his hands in the back of Nico's sweater he pinches at his skin.

Any effort to calm him seems in vain, and his kisses are biting, so Nico goes with it. He lets himself be led and only puts his foot down when Nolan throws his clothes off so frantically that he nearly knocks a frame from the wall. His hands are shaking.

Nico strokes down his arms until he can squeeze at Nolan's wrists.

"What is it?"

Nolan takes several steadying lungfuls of air.

"It feels like a home here, with you." He says, and he sounds so miserable, but Nico gets it. He gets it even if it feels like it's skewered him.

He kisses him, in place of an answer, because he knows nothing he can say will make it better. He can only stay here and let Nolan be free to come and go as he pleases.

Even if one day he decides to go and not come back.

-

When they carry on making their way to bed, trail of clothes tossed carelessly aside, it's slower. Nico both wants to savour every single second and Nolan wants it all now, careless enough to leave him with marks, so they meet somewhere in the middle. Recklessness meeting delicacy.

-

Nolan doesn't take his eyes off him until he's in Nico's lap, with Nico's fingers opening him up so gently that he whines.

"Please, _fuck - please-_ " Nolan gasps, and makes a little bitten off noise when when he pushes in a third.

Yet again, Nico feels entranced.

"Think you could come like this?" He asks, mouth close enough to Nolan's that their lips brush.

Nolan shudders and Nico feels it from the inside.

"Y-yes, I. I don't want to yet, I want to ride you, I need -"

They kiss again and it turns vicious, made only more so when Nico curls his fingers just right and Nolan scores his nails down his back. Some bit of him wants to push Nolan onto his front and interlock their fingers and fuck him hard and good enough that he cries. Another bit wants to just let Nolan take what he wants.

-

In the end, Nolan wins out and rides him, sort of. He holds onto the headboard that Nico's sat up against, and Nico puts nail marks in his hips from how he's controlling them, making him take his time.

He pulls him down at the same time he thrusts up, and Nolan sobs.

"Tell me you won't make me leave." He murmurs desperately, and it's fucked up because of course he'd let him go if he wanted, no matter how it hurt, but he gets the sentiment.

Nolan's barely moving now, just rocking his hips in tiny little grinds like he can't even bear to be a centimetre further apart.

In all fairness, Nico isn't doing much better. He's so fucking close.

"I promise, and I - _fuck_ , I won't leave-"

Nolan's hand finds his, holding tight enough to be painful, and they let go.

-

After Nolan falls asleep, Nico stares at him for the longest time.

"If you do ever leave" He whispers, "I won't hate you."

He presses his lips to Nolan's forehead, and curls up facing him, just the pair of them, warm and soft and closed away safe. It's enough, but it feels so fragile.

He counts the raindrops hitting the window pane until he falls asleep too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, I was away for the week by the coast, hence why this is a little longer - inspiration from grim coastlines is my jam, apparently.
> 
> Also I did not mean for filth to happen at the end there but I regret precisely nothing :$


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It chews at him, not knowing who chained Nolan like that. Not knowing if they're even still living. Not knowing where they are. He almost hopes they are still alive. He doesn't think he'd feel a single scrap of guilt for doling out some restorative justice.

"Six." Nolan says, buried under roughly 6 blankets on the windowsill. "Six fucking days."

Nico stares out from the bed, and groans.

"I know. I never thought I'd miss serving coffee to rude businessmen during the lunchtime rush but...here we are."

The wind howls again, and they can actually hear the snow hitting the glass.

"We have to do the food shop later, too. They're not delivering in this."

Nolan grumbles and traces something in the condensation.

Nico feels his heart rate pick up. There it is again, that terrifying feeling like security. The whole scene is so...domestic. Whining about the weather and chores, looking at how the shirt he was searching for earlier is a little big on Nolan, collar slouched off his shoulder. He wants to touch all of a sudden, to feel surety underneath his fingers.

He doesn't.

-

Sometimes, the strangest things give Nolan pause.

There's a little wooden box he brings home from the café, because it'd be useful to keep spices in rather than the current arrangement of "throw in the cupboard and hope they don't all fall out at the slightest provocation".

"I found one of those, once." He says without any inflection.

Nico hums absentmindedly, changing out of his work clothes.

"In the garden, buried. Not here. Where I used to be."

"Like treasure?" Nico asks, interest piqued.

"Someone's ill gotten treasure, I suppose."

Nico frowns at how humorless it comes out.

"What was-"

"It was some poor girl's skin."

Nico feels a chill spread through him from the centre of his breastbone outwards, like it's latching on to his ribs with claws.

He swallows painfully.

"Did she - did she get it back?"

Nolan is quiet for a long minute.

"No. There was a date on it, inside the lid. I found it about 18 months after someone had hidden it. She'd have been dead by then, so there was no use trying."

He's saying it so - coldly, almost. So bloodlessly that it gives weight to the idea that Nolan has suffered too much, seen this happen before, maybe multiple times.

Maybe to himself, almost.

He forcibly unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

"How do you know?"

Nolan sips at his coffee, eyes fixed on some vague point out of the window.

"Spend more than a year out of the sea, you die."

Nico can't say anything to that. It's too horrifying, too twisted and evil and - jesus. He can't comprehend it. He doesn't want to.

Instead, he gets up and hauls Nolan against himself, arms wrapping around him and squeezing tight. The coffee sloshes out of its mug and Nolan sways into him.

"I'm okay." He says, but his voice is quiet. "I'm okay."

Nico doesn't let go.

-

There's one morning where Nolan wakes up at 6am, gasping, clawing at the sheets, with such ferocity that Nico startles awake too.

He's frozen save for the rapid, shallow breaths he's taking, and Nico lays his hands on him cautiously, stroking up his arm until he can turn his head and force Nolan to refocus his gaze. He looked like he'd been 1000 miles away.

"Hey, hey. It's okay. It's okay, you're here."

Nolan squeezes his fingers tight enough to grind bone, listing sideways to crash into him, grabby and panicked. Nico strokes his back and his hair, grown out and sleep mussed.

"Hate this." He says finally, still taking hicupping half breaths. "Hate it."

"Would it be stupid to ask if you wanna talk about it?"

Nolan manages a smile, but it's a ghoulish thing.

"Maybe. Maybe not."

Nico gets up to open the window a crack. Fresh air is good for panic attacks. Nolan doesn't unhand him, and for once he's glad of his shitty tiny room, because he barely has to step one foot off the bed to be able to reach it. The freezing air blows in, salt sharp enough that it feels like a slap.

He thinks maybe it's that that contributes more to soothing Nolan than him, and doesn't quite know how to feel.

"Are they still alive? Whoever it was?" He says, laying them down face to face. He can just make out Nolan's face in the shifting stripe of moonlight that shines through the gap in the curtains. He looks impassive.

"No." He replies, and the certainty with which he says it is remorseless.

That much of the legends is true, Nico understands. The fury of the scorned. He supposes he should feel something. Horror, maybe.

He doesn't.

-

Nolan gets a little clingy after that. Nico can't say he minds. The only thing that's getting to him is being kept in the dark. God knows, he gets why Nolan is secretive, but he can't help him - not properly - if he doesn't know the full story.

He's lost enough in thought that a little old lady at work has to ring the bell for service.

"Sorry." He says. "What can I get you?"

"Just tea, thank you. Earl Grey. Honey, if you have it."

He nods and puts it on to brew and charges her accordingly.

"I can bring it over rather than have you wait if you'd like." Nico says, feeling slightly bad that he'd ignored her.

"Nonsense." She laughs. "I'm made of sterner stuff than I look."

She makes small talk about the nights drawing in and the recent bad weather, and he hums in all the right places, enough that she puts five dollar in the tip jar.

"- an awful time to go to sea. Your boy must not be happy."

Nico freezes.

"I'm don't know what you're talking about." He chokes eventually. His knuckles are white where they're gripping the side of the cash register.

She levels him with a look.

"Where are you sitting?" He forces himself to ask, and she sighs with enough force it rattles the layer after layer of necklaces she has on. They're mostly pearl or that blue green shell that he can't recall the name of. Nolan told him once, but his brain feels scrambled.

She tsks and points, making her way to sit down.

"I shan't tell, you know." She says lowly, when he's bent close enough that she can whisper.

Then she gets out her - embroidery? Knitting? It's a little frame that looks like a harp, full of threads so fine they look a bit like hairs, not waiting for him to leave before she puts her gnarled hands to work.

The whole encounter makes Nico shudder, and he keeps an eye on her until she leaves. He almost expects something creepy to happen, and he's weirdly disappointed when it doesn't. She does, however, leave another generous tip. Swings and roundabouts.

-

He doesn't get the chance to tell Nolan about it, because he comes home exhausted. Nolan greets him at door, hair damp.

"Been swimming?" He says, stifling a yawn.

"Mm. It was good." He drapes the towel he'd been holding over his shoulder and crowds into Nico's space before he's even taken his coat off, fingers curling into his shirt. "Hungry?"

Nico wrinkles his nose.

"Not really. Ate earlier. I'm just. Tired."

"Bed?"

"Bed. Please."

Nolan kisses him, chaste.

"I'll be waiting." He says, over exaggerated, waggling his eyebrows, and Nico snorts, fond.

-

It's a strange, soft thing to lay with Nolan in the dark, talking, listening to the house creak as the cold night settles in.

They're laid beneath the ancient knitted blanket that was Nico's as a kid, and a duvet besides. Pressed shoulder to ankle. Just them, in a tiny pocket of time they've carved out for themselves, no world existing outside the glow of the single pillar candle he lit.

Nico takes a deep breath, realising there's no good time to bring what he knows up.

"I -"

"Don't." Nolan mumurs, soft.

"You don't even know what I was going to say."

"Was it something about my tortured past?"

He's smiling, but it's rueful. A little sad. He's taken to calling it his Tortured Past (tm) but it's not really a joke.

"No." He lies. "I just. Met someone who knows you. She told me to say hi."

She didn't, technically, but Nolan doesn't need to know that.

Nolan stiffens up instantly.

"Who - who was it?" He croaks.

Nico didn't get a name and kicks himself for it, but pushes ahead anyway.

"Old woman, long hair, that weird green shell jewellery. Likes embroidery. Slight moustache but she carries it off."

The moustache joke falls flat, but on the upside Nolan takes a deep breath and goes limp.

"Abalone."

"Sorry?"

"The shell, it's abalone."

"Okay?"

"She's - She used to help. Back when I was here before. Hid the skin for me when he wanted to take it."

"He?" Nico manages, fingers clenching into a fist without his say so.  
  
Nolan looks at it and traces where his knuckles are white until they relax.

"Yeah. An ex. Not a good one. Wanted me to stay."

Nico swallows hard.

"And you didn't want to?"

Nolan shakes his head.

"I don't belong here."

Nico feels his stomach twist, but doesn't let on. He can't. He knows, realistically, Nolan has good reason to be cagey.

He just doesn't know the specifics.

Instead, he lays his hand on Nolan's chest, over his heart, and makes to draw him close. Nolan closes his eyes and presses their foreheads together. When he kisses him, it's a gentle sort of agony.

"There'll always be a place for you. With me. Whether it's here or - or wherever. It's not always a place, right? Home?"

Nolan's lips make a thin line, and he nods once, shakily.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. I - fuck, I love you."

Nico squeezes him tight.

"Love you." He says.

After he's blown out the candle, Nolan rolls over and tucks himself under Nico's chin, pulling the quilt up until he's comfy, then kisses the underside of his chin.

God.

-

Nico wanders into the town on his break one afternoon, aimless. He's restless in the knowledge of someone trying to trap Nolan like that. He's always known, really. He doesn't know whether he's happier with the confirmation he was right, though. He can't help but look around at people, wondering how many of them are complicit in the secrecy. How many of them that brush past, running errands, taking their kids places, actually just turned the other cheek.

After all, there seems a pretty even split in attitude. Half passive, half fearful. Selkies aren't a good omen. There's always a clock counting down the hours until them being on land goes disastrously wrong. The whole folklore surrounding them is about how fucking with the sea, a whole other world, will bring nothing but chaos.

It chews at him, not knowing who chained Nolan like that. Not knowing if they're even still living. Not knowing where they are. He almost hopes they are still alive. He doesn't think he'd feel a single scrap of guilt for doling out some restorative justice.

When he eventually clocks back in, one of his workmates is on her way out, struggling to light her cigarette in the wind. She smiles in greeting then swears when the flame goes out again.

Nico holds out his coat to shield her and makes a snap decision.

"You work part time at the archives, right?" He says.

"Hello to you too." She says, then offers him a drag.

He takes it, needing the nicotine suddenly. Old college habits die hard, he guesses.

"Yeah, though. Why?" She's looking at him curiously, but doesn't question it. Probably because she wants to get home, but he appreciates it all the same.

"Could you get me a day pass?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oooh boy I'm sorry this took so long - I chopped and changed it so much (rip emotional sex scene) but I hope it reads well!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Discoveries are made for both Nico and Nolan, but not necessarily good ones.

Nico doesn't like sneaking around. Hates it, even. He says he has to work his usual day off and creeps off to the archives.

It's cloak and dagger and surprisingly anticlimatic all at once, because the building itself looks like a bland office block attached to the university. Dull off-grey concrete and old blinds drawn shut.

Inside, it's somehow more depressing, with a hospital ward colour scheme and only one other person there. Even they look like they'd rather be anywhere else.

Still, it makes it easy to fit in. Look miserable. Clutch your thermos of coffee like your life depends on it. Pretend to work and not actually know what the fuck you're doing.

He starts in the folklore files, flicking through slowly. Most of the stuff isn't about the local area, more a general catalogue of creatures and cryptids. The flatwoods monster, nessie, the jersey devil. All nonsense and the creation of - according to Nolan - people who are drunk, or people who want to fuck monsters.

The fact that Nolan had said that with his face smooshed against Nico's chest when they were idly watching some corny game show and getting pointlessly competitive about it makes something strange twinge in his chest.

After about half an hour it starts to get tedious. All he has about the sea is an article by a very angry fisherman convinced the reason his ancient boat isn't reeling in big catches is because selkies are stealing the fish (he steals that one, tucking it in his coat), and one about sea silk. It's sort of gross; a dying art of spinning and sewing with the super fine silk made by a marine slug. It's not relevant to anything in particular, but it is pretty cool. He can totally pretend to be knowledgeable about the sea to Nolan if nothing else.

Two hours pass.

He sort of gets sucked in, so shoot him. There's a lot of weird shit that happens in the world, and it varies from hilarious to really weird.

Then he gets to a "historic crime" tab. It's all fairly normal; a few murders, new laws, stuff about protests and protestors that turn bloody after "clashes" with police, and one particularly odd news piece about a turf war between beachcombers.

Then he finds it.

Not about Nolan - considering it was published in the 60s - but a man caught for serial killings by chance after his car was searched when he tried to sell illegal pelts. It doesn't mention selkies, but Nico has a bad feeling about it. He can put two and two together; 13 missing women, 13 pelts. Only 10 years prison time because there was a redacted debate about the "nature" of the victims. He feels viscerally ill and protective all at once, hands shaking as he slips the clipping into his coat.

He flips through the rest of the tabs. There's no more murder - thank god - but there is a major arson attack followed by a missing persons poster for a man only a little younger than he is. There's nothing even remarkable about him, save for the eyes. They've the same look as Nolan, somehow. Distant and piercing all at once.

Nico shudders and hopes it was a case of fleeing back to the sea.

Checking there's nobody to see him, he pockets those too. There's a cowardly bit of him that wishes he was still ignorant. That he didn't know about the selkies even existing, or the precarious nature of their existence or the constant, buried fear that Nolan will decide the land isn't for him.

Nico wouldn't even blame him, not entirely, but when he talks about not belonging, or not feeling entirely welcome, it scares him stiff.

-

"Let's get out of here." Nico says without preamble the following morning. It's a particularly foggy day, and it's stuck the fallen leaves to the window.

Nolan groans and curls tighter in the quilt, nose wrinkling, tugging at Nico's heart.

"What?" He croaks, only deigning to open one eye.

"Go somewhere. Anywhere. Just for a few days."

That seems to pique his interest, at least enough to make him sit up. Nico presses his coffee into his hand.

"Are you bribing me here?" He murmurs, voice made even deeper by sleep, hair looking the wrong side of messy, kind of like a bird's nest. It's unfairly attractive and Nico hates it.

"Is it working?"

Nolan squints at him.

"Hmm." He says. "Jury's still out. How would we even get there, your car's shit."

"Hey!"

"It is! It sounds like a plane is taking off if you have to go round a corner. It's a coffin on wheels."

Nico winces. So what, his car isn't great and barely gets used because gas is expensive and he can walk most places. So what if one time the cd player fried to such an extent he had to Adele singing "hello?" for 3 whole miles because it wouldn't turn off.

"Point. We could always take the bus."

"Eugh." Nolan says, because the idea of being stuck for hours in a coach full of rowdy school kids, pensioners, and babies who very much disagree with being present...it's a lot.

"Are you disagreeing for the sake of it?"

Nolan squints at him.

"Maybe. I just want you to be sure, y'know. Not just doing it for my sake."

"Is there something wrong with that?"

"I- no. I suppose."

He wriggles down the bed until he can put his legs over his lap, and Nico strokes the inside of his knee.

"I like doing stuff for you. I like seeing you happy. I just don't think you're happy here."

Nolan stares at him for a long, long second.

"I like some bits of it. Down near the caves. Out by the old lighthouse where the water gets deep. When we're both tired and fall asleep at almost the exact time. You."

"Catch me before I swoon."

Nolan pinches his arm.

"Okay, I deserved that. But it doesn't matter. Are you in?"

"God...fine. As long as it's on the coast."

"Naturally. It's where alk the best paces are, or so I've been told."

There's a pause, and Nolan leans in at the same time Nico does, making what would have been a peck on the lips rougher. Nico clenches his hand on instinct, forgetting it was resting idly against Nolan's thigh, and Nolan lets a breathy noise out against his mouth, choppy and shuddering.

"Fuck." He groans, real eloquent.

Nolan snags the front of his t shirt to haul him in again and nips from his mouth to his jaw until he's biting at his neck.

It's a lot. He pulls away, just for a second.

"Are you okay?" He asks, hands creeping up Nolan's thighs.

Nolan sinks his teeth into his collarbone.

"Ow, what the fuck?"

"Shut up asking me if I'm okay. Stop treating me like I'm fragile."

There's a lot Nico could say to that. I'm not treating you like you're fragile. I worry sometimes. Softness isn't me implying you're weak. You deserve so much more than I can give you.

Emphasis on could, because Nolan is working his hands under his shirt and his mouth is still worrying the same spot on his collarbone and his last two brain cells do not give a shit about deep, meaningful conversations.

"Yeah, okay. I can do that." He says, and pulls Nolan in until he gets with the programme and straddles him.

He always forgets Nolan sleeps naked.

Something in the disparity between him still having his clothes on and Nolan not makes his hips stutter forward, hard enough that Nolan makes a half pained noise, and fuck, Nico is so far gone on him.

They end up getting off with Nolan grinding against his thigh as Nico whispers filth and endearments against his cheek, followed by Nolan slinking down the bed and blowing him. It's fucking unfair, how good he is at it, fingers dug into Nico's thighs.

Nico kisses him afterwards, and strokes over his puffy lips. Just looking at him is almost too much, sometimes, in a brutal sort of way.

(He still counts it as a win on his part, because he likes treating Nolan, and figures getting a blow job that has fried his brain is an enthusiastic yes to his big plan.)

-

The biggest surprise of their trip is things going right.

There's a place about three hours away that's just a harbour and miles of beach untouched by tourists. There's a small fishing community and a couple of cafés, but not much else in the way of people. Nico even googled what the sea was like (cold with kelp forests) because he wanted it to be perfect.

The only hitch was the car, which the boot of jams, so Nolan has to sit with both their rucksacks in his lap. It sort of ruins Nico's fantasies of reaching across and grasping Nolan's hand or laying it on his thigh and taking a picture because he's basic like that, but whatever. He'll deal.

It's probably for the best considering the steering is tempestuous at best, anyway.

"Are we eloping?" Nolan says, rummaging for snacks already. They've been in the car 30 minutes tops.

"No. Also I hope you know that the food has to last us."

"Rationing - the best start to any vacation."

"Shut the fuck up."

"I need it! I went swimming, in case you've forgotten."

Nico hasn't, mostly because the salt water makes Nolan's hair all wavy even after he's rinsed it and it's hot. He never claimed not to be shallow.

"Hm." He mutters.

"You don't even like chocolate anyway, because you're a disgrace to your home country. Technically I'm doing you a favour by eating it."

"Wait, I am not!"

"It's okay, I still love you."

Nico feels all warm in his chest, and blindly reaches to ruffle Nolan's hair. Usually, he grouses and ducks away, but this time he leans in. He presses a kiss to the inside of Nico's wrist, and Nico isn't even going to touch how that makes fluster.

He keeps his eyes on the road.

There's a few minutes of companionable silence. Nolan gets the radio to work only to be confronted with the latest gloomy news headlines.

"Ugh." He says, with feeling. Nico is inclined to agree.

Eventually he finds something agreeable, playing chart stuff. He's not the type to sing but he's bouncing his knee to the beat and slides down in his seat. Nico is very chivalrous and respectful and doesn't stop the car to mouth at the strip of skin it reveals between his shirt and jeans.

"Will it be weird, swimming somewhere new?"

Nolan hums.

"Not really. I'm not from where you live."

"Technically neither am I."

"It's not the same. But I appreciate the thought."

Nico reaches over and smacks the back of his head.

"Dick."

"Takes one to know one."

"Fuck off."

"It's...different for sure. But - I'll get used to it."

"Do you think there'll be others?"

"What, selkies? No. Probably not. We're pretty rare."

"Aren't I lucky."

"Yes."

He pauses to eat another handful of trail mix and lets out a long breath.

"We don't actually come to land to be with people. More it's just a change of scenery. If we do, and if we stay, there's not usually relationships. Nothing more than hook ups is an unspoken rule."

Nico bites down on some insecure bit of him that goes "but what about me?"

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Some just - prefer it here. Or they're born here and just like it better. There's even myths about mothers concealing their child's identity. Hiding their skin. If they never know of the sea, they don't die from not going in it -"

He stops, looking awkward, lips pressed thin.

"Sorry. This is probably. Really boring to you."

"No! No, sorry. Continue." Nico blurts, wanting to smack himself for being too eager. He doesn't want Nolan to think there's ghoulish curiosity at play.

"Okay. So, you know how every so often there's a mystery disappearance in the news and -"

"-and they find clothes on the beach, or personal effects-"

"-and no trace otherwise? They'll usually say it's unsolved or presumed dead or something, when it's mostly just people going back to sea."

"Huh."

Nolan side-eyes him.

"I can hear the cogs turning."

"Fuck off."

"I'm not going anywhere, and I'd tell you if I was. Long term, I mean."

Nico hates there's a bit of him dreading and second guessing even so. He should take Nolan at his word. He thinks of the articles he's still got in his jacket pocket and bites his tongue.

"I know." He says under his breath.

Nolan turns the radio back up and reaches over to squeeze his thigh, warmth bleeding through.

-

The woman at the front desk when they arrive could talk the hind legs from a mule, but she's nice enough, showing them to their room, badgering her husband to take their bags up even though they insist they could carry them up themselves.

"It's so lovely to see romance in a young couple these days" she sighs. "So many are just social media this, internet that."

Nolan nods along, trying desperately to keep a straight face. Nico tries not to think about how there's lube poking out the side pocket of his rucksack.

When she lets them in, she says she's given them the most romantic room with a wink, and Nolan's ears go pink, because a grandma has read them.

He flops down on the bed, kicking his shoes off along the way. Nolan follows, only he's actually made the effort to strip down. He presses along Nico's back, and he's so warm that it makes him instantly sleepy.

"Thanks." He says softly, hand under the back of Nico's sweater, gentle against the small of his back.

Nico swallows roughly. A part of him feels disingenuous for trying creep around about Nolan's past, but it isn't as though he knows. Not that that stops the gnawing guilt.

"No problem."

-

When he wakes up it's barely light, and the other side of the bed is cold. He reaches out and frowns when his hand brushes over something crinkly.

"Gone swimming" it reads, next to a really bad drawing of a seal, and Nico huffs out a laugh. Nolan should probably be better at recreating a picture of what he is, but he can hardly talk. One time he'd tried to draw a person for one of his young cousins to colour in and she'd sat and frowned at it before running off to do something else.

It's all very sweet and domestic feeling. Him, making coffee so it'll be of drinkable temperature when he returns and waking up slow. It's nice, or at least it is until he notices that Nolan has taken his jacket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long, sweet christ. It is a longer chapter this time though, so hopefully that makes up for it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nolan's making soft little sounds like it's him being picked apart, and Nico can feel them where his fingers rest at the base of his throat.
> 
> It's heady and desperate enough that Nolan has to physically hold him up afterwards, helping him into the shower and tasting the sea as it washes from Nolan's skin.

In the six hours that Nolan is gone, Nico reverts to his college habits and buys a pack of cigarettes, smokes the cigarettes, feels nauseous, paces, and tries to distract himself with a trashy lifetime movie.

The lifetime movie ends tragically with 3 broken hearts and an entire family wiped out in a car accident. It isn't helpful to his mood much.

He tidies the place, arranging their clothes in the wardrobe, tries to read the newspaper, anything he possibly can do to not actually think. The uncertainty kills him. Even if Nolan had taken his phone, this isn't exactly a matter he can resolve via text.

"Hey, just wondering if you checked your pockets. Nothing important. Don't do it if you haven't. Just betrayed your hard won hard given trust."

Yeah, no.

Eventually he's worried himself into exhaustion and curls up in the cosy little window alcove, pulling on a sweater that used to be his but Nolan has claimed as his own. It smells like him and a little like smoke from the fire. The view is quite something, dark blue - green waves breaking on the beach, huge chunks of driftwood washed up by a recent storm. Technically this place is no bigger than where he lives now, but it seems to fit him and Nolan better.

Really, he's never actually felt at home there, but finding a new place is always so hard and moving itself sucks, so he just stuck around. Maybe that's why him and Nolan ended up together. He's no great believer in destiny, but he wonders sometimes, about the chances of two people both as restless and flighty and flawed as them finding stability in each other.

He falls into a fitful sleep.

-

On the day he met Nolan, he'd been on holiday with his parents, a somewhat futile attempt at family bonding. It wasn't that they'd fought, or had some huge bust up. They'd just gradually grown apart, and by the time he'd finished university he was pretty sure he didn't want to stay in Switzerland.

He can admit now, that announcing he was just going to stay in Canada and not go home with them was a bad idea. At the time he was 20 and irrational, feeling that he'd never rebelled quite enough.

As rebellions go, he supposes, deciding to move thousands of miles away on a whim rather than use his savings to go on a gap year, travelling like he'd always planned - it was quite a big one.

So they'd fought, and his mother had cried, and he'd felt gutted. She hardly ever cried, and rather than actually comfort her, he'd skulked off to the end of the pier. He'd laid on his stomach, head hanging over the edge as the tide came in, as the water crept up deeper, and _sure_ , he'd cried.

That moment, the sixth tear hitting the water, had been it. Every decision in his life up until then had somehow brought him to suddenly focusing his eyes on how the water was rippling strangely, a seam snaking in a straight line towards a point directly beneath him.

Then a narrow snout bobbing to the surface, and an almost comically large pair of glassy black eyes.

Something - and to this day he has no idea what - compelled him to go to the disused lifeboat ramp, where the concrete block was nearly level with the water. His sneakers had soaked through because of the few inches of water, but he'd squatted down nontheless, and sure enough, the seal followed.

It had looked at him a good while, and it took perhaps ten minutes for it to come close enough to touch. He'd reached out, slow, making sure to keep in full view of it, and patted it's head.

The second Nico did, it felt like a static shock, and the poor thing jolted and reared back, swishing downwards with a splash and vanishing.

That had set him off again, even though Nico had no idea why, wiping his eyes on his t shirt and feeling weirdly slighted. By a seal.

As pathetic moments go, it had been in the top ten.

He's not proud of the shriek he'd made when suddenly a naked young man broke the surface.

"Holy shit." He'd gawked, and promptly fallen on his ass in his haste to get up, and the man had laughed. He had a nice laugh. He was nice to look at.

"Hi." He said, and what do you know, his voice was nice too. "This is a weird question, but can you get me some clothes?"

Then Nico spotten the pelt he was clutching awkwardly in one hand as he trod water.

"Holy shit." Nico had said, quieter, understanding. Sort of.

-

Nico drifts for a while, not asleep, but not awake either. He's never thought himself fatalistic, but he can't help wonder what'll happen after all this blows up in his face. Despite his best intentions, there's actually not much for him back home. A shitty cold flat, a shitty job. Not near enough a city that he can find work relevant to his degree. Nolan's the only thing keeping him there. He wants -

He doesn't know what he wants. To get away, but would he even be happier somewhere bigger, if he was without Nolan? Nolan who's cryptic and withdrawn at times, but also so fucking warm.

He thinks of the first time he took Nolan to bed. He'd barely moved in, boxes still littering the path from living room to bedroom, Nolan nearly tripping over because he'd yanked Nico sharply closer by his shirt front and caught his leg on the box of kitchen utensils.

("The _fuck_ are those doing in here?" He'd snickered, because they were in the doorway to the bedroom.)

Nico had no excuse, and instead focused on walking Nolan backwards until he could shove him down and crawl after him on the bed. The dying light had made his hair look almost burnished, fanned around him on the pillow, and an old little scar on his lip had stood out.

Nico had been caught by the details, held fast, and although Nolan looked nonplussed, his cheeks had mottled further and a flush crept down his chest where his shirt parted.

He's been fucking beautiful, eyes drifting shut when Nico pushed his hair from his eyes, lips parting like he'd wanted to be kissed, and - Nico hadn't been in love with him yet, but he thinks that was the moment he'd become stuck on him. Like after that it was just a matter if time until he did.

Nico had maybe expected it to go at a different tempo to the one they'd set, rougher and quicker. Instead he got transfixed by Nolan's pulse thrumming at his bared throat, the moment stretching until he'd brushed his fingers along Nolan's jaw, thumbed softly at the little scar -

And Nolan opened his eyes, pupils blown, and mouthed at his fingers, lips puffy from where Nico had bitten them, _made_ them that way, and the thread snapped.

They'd unravelled. He'd followed the the wash of red down his chest, wanting to see how far it went, bitten at the tiny soft bit of Nolan's stomach, got a hand under him to grab his ass as he blew him.

Every bit of him that had been low level panicking about how really, he barely knew Nolan died pretty quick after he'd heard the bitten off, nearly pained noise he made when Nico dug his nails into his hip to hold him down.

-

Nolan gets back at 4pm, weirdly peppy to say he's spent most of the day out at sea.

"Hey." He says, smiling too softly, and Nico feels abruptly like someone is squeezing at his guts. "Sorry, I went out further than usual and fell asleep on a rock and then -"

He doesn't know, Nico thinks, some clash of relief and despair making the room tilt, compelling him to stride over to him and back him against the wall. He presses him there, pushing into his space, and kisses him hard. He tugs at his lower lip, thumbs pressing into his hipbones, and Nolan jerks.

When he pulls back to catch his breath, Nolan looks abruptly wrecked, eyes half shut, panting. It reminds him vividly of when Nolan had fucked him and looked up at him like he was the otherworldly one.

"Miss me?"

 _I will do_ , Nico thinks. _I really really will._

"Something like that." He says, and presses his thigh between Nolan's, revelling in how his hips twitch like he wants to just get off rubbing up against him. Just the thought sends a bolt or want down his spine.

Nolan's fingers dig in to his back as Nico mouths down his neck and the desperate feeling doesn't go away. He has to stop thinking, because all of this, the idea of losing it, makes him think of how maybe he can partially understand the people who steal pelts. He feels nauseated with himself.

Something must show, because Nolan cups his face with one hand and looks at him.

"Hey, you okay?" He whispers, like they're sharing a secret.

"I'm fine." He replies, and presses a kiss to his palm, works on his belt.

"Sure?"

Nico nods, and Nolan looks like he's going to say something else, so he turns his head a fraction and sucks his thumb into his mouth. This entire thing is a weird mirror image of the first time.

"Oh, fuck. _Fuck_ -" He gasps when Nico slides a hand into his underwear, and it's enough of a distraction that Nico can pull the jacket off him and throw it at his case.

-

Nico drops to his knees and blows him where he stands, letting Nolan fuck his mouth with little stuttering thrusts, his hands not knowing where to settle, glancing off his cheek, running through his hair. It's too much, and he's glad he at least has an excuse that his eyes tear up. The tenderness feels too much like worship he doesn't deserve.

He sucks harder, running the back of his tongue against that one spot under the head that makes Nolan's knees buckle and has him grabbing at Nico's hair, enough that his scalp tingles.

"Jesus _christ_ , I'm -" He moans under his breath, and Nico takes him as deep as he can, feeling vindicated when Nolan makes a nearly pained sound. Nico digs his nails into the tiny soft bit at the top of his thigh, and that's all it takes for him to come in his mouth, stomach trembling under his hand, little white scar odd and smooth.

Nico hasn't quite swallowed when he gets pulled up, legs weak with pins and needles. He gets off against Nolan's hip, held by the nape of his neck as Nolan sucks his own come from Nico's tongue, making soft little sounds like it's him being picked apart, and Nico can feel them where his fingers rest at the base of his throat.

It's heady and desperate enough that Nolan has to physically hold him up afterwards, helping him into the shower and tasting the sea as it washes from Nolan's skin.

-

He's the one that wakes up in a panic this time. When he looks it's only 3am, but he hadn't even been aware he'd passed out. The panic abates slightly when he feels Nolan breathing softly where he's curled with his back to Nico's chest, but it still nags at him until he remembers he didn't actually move the old clippings. Fuck.

Painstakingly, he creeps off the bed and rummages around for the jacket, grabbing it as he sneaks into the bathroom, flipping the fan on as he goes.

He sorts through the three little scraps of paper. He hasn't made copies, but it's too big a risk to keep them. He'd lose too much. Not knowing is a small price to pay for this tenderness.

He sets light to them without thinking about it anymore and watches the smoke curl up from the sink, thankful that this place is old enough that fire safety isn't a priority and there aren't smoke alarms. It feels almost anticlimatic, because there's no great sense of loss. No agony of destroying his only chance of clarification. What could he learn that could possibly change anything?

He waits until the flames have turned them to ash and rinses it away, rubbing the smears away to make sure nothing is left behind. He breathes out.

-

It's strange going back into the bedroom. Nolan hasn't moved an inch because he sleeps like the dead. It's still eerily silent in a way that Nico has learnt is weirdly specific to the coast, with only the waves breaking it.

He curls up on the window seat, drawing his legs to his chest and pressing his forehead to the glass. It mirrors when he woke up to Nolan nearly having a panic attack in a similar position back home, and an irrational bit of him waits for Nolan to come round and do the same for him.

He tries not to see the fact he doesn't as as bad omen.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really am on a roll with updates and I'm running with it, ladies!
> 
> Also I'm an absolute SLUT for the sea and a magical realism. As you can probably tell. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a friend's birthday and don't know every detail about them because neither are on my team, but I hope it read well nontheless!
> 
> Also they're both too pretty to live and I'm going to lay down and have a good old scream about it.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! Please be gentle with me.


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